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By Marshall Jones
It’s become habit in my home that when 8:30 p.m roles around, we turn off the TV, the computer, the video games and iPods and gather for a half hour of reading before bed. We’ve read dozens of books, most recently some Road Dahl, a little Rats of Nimh and we tried an old favourite of Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy but abandoned it when we realized it was well over the heads of 11- and 10-year-old boys.
In its stead, my wife pulled out some old binders we had stored away. They’re stuffed with hundreds of my old columns, most of them about my family. I used to write about them all the time, about all the true and testing challenges of parenting, which for me, largely involved disgusting bodily functions.
For a long time, I thought I shouldn’t be doing it. It felt like I was betraying their privacy and from what little they understood about it at the time, I got the sense they felt that way as well, but they were too young. It’s been a couple of years and the boys are old enough to actually understand now what I was writing. As I read them, I feared their reactions.
After all, week after week, I exposed them to the equivalent of a bare naked baby picture. I told strangers our most intimate stories. About how they insisted on peeing outdoors. About the Diaper Explosion Incident of 2001. About their potty-mouths. About their reactions to a sexy magazine cover. About their hissy-fits, their slap-fights, their fear of wasps.
I told everyone they couldn’t tie their shoes and had messy rooms. I’ve named their night time stuffies, said they watched Caillou and what colour their bwankies were.
They had a few questions. So I explained that I never once used their names. I’ve called them Baby, Toddler, Toddler Too, C, J, CJ and JJ. Also dough-head, meat-head and bone-head. I called one a Little General, too.
I explained that some of it was written in a certain way to make a joke. I don’t really think you’re monsters plotting to assassinate me and my hair follicles. Not really.
They seemed to be laughing at the right parts, so I thought I was okay to carry on. So I kept reading. About how I described them as my enemies in a tactical ground war. About their terrible jokes, their attempts at wrestling moves and their clumsy breaks and bruises. I had almost forgotten but I admitted in print—and now read aloud to my son—that I eavesdropped on his first attempt at a pickup line with the neighbour girl. And then wrote about it. And also, how she rejected him.
You see why I was so nervous? I haven’t even gotten into all my bizarre and “unconventional” parenting methods I thought wise to share. Of course the boys always knew that. They just didn’t know that other people knew that.
They were hearing about themselves this way for the first time. Surely I am causing some deep psychological damage. I am always paranoid about my great potential to mess up their lives completely. It’s my insecurity to believe I am more hindrance than help as a father. But writing a column always opened a door to talk with other parents and find help. One of them was my kids’ old principal. He told me a very simple lesson: At the very least, do no harm. When you’re a young parent as I was when I wrote most of them, you think it’s a piece of cake to nurture them, inspire them, coach them and then let them go. Yeah, maybe. But at the very least, do no harm.
Well, clearly I failed the test.
They hit the sack after reading and I asked them plainly what they thought. My oldest said he thought they were funny and listed off all the ones about him he liked. I chatted up my youngest and realized all my fears were true. I’ve scarred him for life. Not quite the way I expected, but, clearly scarred.
“You wrote some good stories,” he said. “But you wrote a lot about C.J. Why didn’t you write more about me?”
marshall@kelowna.com
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I remember those articles!
Even though as parents we have a few years on you, we laughed (in all the right places) at just how little parenting has really changed through the years.
Your musings reminded us to tell our now grown children to enjoy all the little bits of the parental journey, you really only get one shot at it.
You should keep us updated on the travails of the Jones household as the real fun begins: TEENAGERS!
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Marshall Jones is back. Thanks for sharing some of your parenting once again with us readers. I always enjoyed those stories … made me feel less inept as a parent with our own 3 kids.
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